Remind Me To Smile
by PineappleGrenade
Summary: Sometimes, Master Bruce, I don't know who you are anymore." And then mobsters start turning up dead, along with old and new foes; but Batman finds that before he can know his enemy, he must first find himself again.
1. Chapter 1

_We could remind ourselves that  
We must laugh  
Reconsider: fame  
I need new reasons  
This is detention__, it's not fun at all_

"Why is a mirror like a psychiatrist's couch?"

The man who called himself the Riddler had a lot going for him – he had a real name, somewhere out in the world he had a family, he still had his intellect and he had a neatly fitted orange jumpsuit with 1056 embroidered on the chest. The only thing missing from the perfect picture was his freedom, but as an inmate of Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane at least he was a shining example. He always took his medication without a fuss, he never incited riots in the mess hall or attacked the guards and he hardly ever, and if he did it was always through no fault of his own, got into trouble with his fellow inmates.

His fatal flaw, his hamartia as the Ancient Greeks might have called it, was the very thing that had landed him here at Arkham in the first place – his obsessive love of riddles.

"Because both are used for reflection," he answered himself as he often had to in so uneducated a world, flashing a triumphant look at his psychiatrist.

It was this love of wordplay, and the arrogance that seemed to go hand in hand with it for him, that had led to the fact that Riddler had in all possibility less that twenty-four hours to live. Some people just didn't appreciate wit; after all, that was the reason Oscar Wilde had ended up in prison wasn't it? Because the masses were scared by intelligence. But now the intelligent one was very scared by the mass of scaly flesh that called itself Killer Croc and who would, in all likelihood, be the one to escort Riddler to the eternal imprisonment of death.

"And are you going to do any reflecting today, Edward?" his psychiatrist asked, rousing him from his morbid thoughts.

Her name was Doctor Harleen Quinzel and as the youngest woman to ever become a fully qualified doctor of psychiatry, she was as brilliant as she was beautiful. Her quick, incisive mind had cut to the heart of criminal psychology, seeing what approaches worked and what didn't until she became renowned in her chosen field of study.

However, all her time spent wading through the dark psyches of her patients didn't seem to have tainted her bright nature. Outside of work she was always ready with a friendly word or a cheerful smile, and with her patients she could be the calming influence they needed.

Her heart was the source of her hamartia, for it tended to lead her into places her reason would rather she not go.

"I'm afraid I can't," Riddler answered with a sigh that almost sounded genuine, watching his psychiatrist slyly from the corners of his eyes. "I'm cracked." Feeling thoroughly pleased with himself, he steepled long fingers beneath his chin and looked pensively up at the ceiling.

With his eyes averted, he didn't notice that Doctor Quinzel had gotten up until she was perched right beside him on the long leather couch upon which he reclined, his legs crossed primly at the ankles. Puzzled, although he took care not to show it on his face, he lowered his gaze to watch her. She placed her notebook and pen down on a little side table nearby, nudging a therapeutically placed pot plant out of the way to make room for them, before carefully removing her glasses and folding the arms up.

"There are more ways than one to skin a cat," she informed him, placing her glasses down beside the pen.

A little suspiciously, his mind still preoccupied with reptilian death threats, Riddler inquired "Would this be the cat that curiosity killed?" But despite his misgivings, a smile still lingered at the corners of his lips. Something was about to happen, something interesting.

It only confirmed Riddler's suspicions when his psychiatrist slowly, intoxicatingly arched her back, bringing a beautifully manicured hand down either side of his head. Some strands of fine blonde hair worked their way free of the professional bun binding them at the nape of her neck and tickled the skin of his face. He swallowed forcefully and tried not to notice that the top button of her blouse was undone.

"Yes, but satisfaction brought her back, Mister Nygma."

Her mouth was so close to his ear, that he could feel her breath, hot and moist. If there had been a little more space between their two bodies, he would have reached across and pinched himself. With that option out of the question he had to simply settle for tentatively placing his hands on her hips and taking reassurance of her reality from the firm press of her body against his. His natural arrogance reasserted itself on his face, driving away the insecurity as if it had never existed.

"And what about _my_ satisfaction, Doctor Quinzel?"

In answer, she dipped her head until her full, bright red lips were pressed against his in a kiss. For a moment he was frozen, but her mouth was so sweet, so pliable and yet so hungry that he returned her passion with fervor. Her body fitted against his as if it had been designed exclusively for the purpose. Eagerly, he held her close and shared in her caresses.

All too soon, Doctor Quinzel was breaking the contact between them, standing and smoothing her hair back into place. It was the first time that Riddler had ever been sorry to reach the end of a counseling session.

Two orderlies entered the room after a perfunctory knock. A professional look back on her features in place of the flushed excitement from moments before, Doctor Quinzel nodded in acknowledgement to them.

Ever so slightly dazed, the taste of his psychiatrist still lingering on in his mouth, Riddler stood and allowed the orderlies to roughly take him by the arms. He hardly took any notice of them as they mechanically manhandled him out of the door, a bronze plaque reading 'Dr. H. Quinzel' affixed to its dark mahogany surface.

"I'll see you next week, Mister Nygma. I think we've made some real progress today," said the good doctor from behind him and it was a mark of her hold over him that he said nothing at all in reply, not even the suggestion of a witty comeback on his tongue.

He woke to reality soon enough in the uninspiring white corridors of Arkham.

Coming towards him, flanked by a couple of the asylum's heavy lifters, was Killer Croc on his way to his weekly counseling session. The sight of him was enough to send any thoughts of romance in Riddler's head scuttling for cover. The man's – if he could even be called that – gait was a shambling predator's prowl, every step sending his powerful musculature rippling in a way that would make any champion weight lifter feel like a ninety pound weakling in comparison.

The Croc's eyes, yellow reptilian slits set deeply in the scaled monstrosity that was his skin, blazed with hatred as they caught sight of Riddler. The smaller man feigned studious disinterest – glancing at the ceiling, his shoes, anywhere except that scaly face with its collapsed-in nose and thin-lipped mouth filled with dagger-like teeth.

And then, just as the two inmates passed each other, Riddler's mouth developed a mind of its own and smirked "Be seeing you later, alligator."

There were a few seconds of tenterhooked silence whilst the insult took time to process through Croc's sluggish mind. When the barb of it did finally sting him, he loosed a roar that seemed to shake the rambling asylum right down to its rotten foundations.

"You're dead! Hear me, Riddler? _Dead_!"

The threat was followed by the shouts of orderlies and the frantic sounds of a scuffle that Riddler couldn't see because it took place behind him. A man screamed and cursed, the Croc snarled, someone shouted for tranquilizers. The snarls heightened and then gradually died down, followed by a quiet thump as the Croc succumbed to the drugs, leaving silence except for an orderly's quiet whimpers of pain.

Walking on between his two guards, his hands clasped placidly in front of him, Riddler smiled and murmured "At least when I die no one's going to make me into a handbag." He said it even though his heart was beating hard and fast enough to hurt him. But still he smiled calmly.

Once deposited back into the dubious safety of his own cell, Riddler set about tidying it. The walk around the small space and the ritualistic plumping of the stained pillow on his bunk, the twitching back into place of his worn blanket and finally the distasteful inspection of his toilet facilities all helped to calm his down almost as successfully as a challenging crossword puzzle. He always performed those exact tasks in the exact same order every time he was returned to his cell – it made being in there more bearable.

The room straightened out to his satisfaction, Riddler turned his attention to his second favourite past-time here at Arkham. Curling his fingers delicately around the bars that caged him, he leant forwards to see better into the cell opposite his. A low hum of machinery came from within it. The light beyond the bars was poor, the cell being in the shadow of one of the huge ancient trees that populated Arkham's overgrown grounds, and so it took him a few moments to locate his fellow prisoner.

"Hey, Freeze!" he sniped upon catching sight of the man lurking near the back of his confines, surrounded by the humming machinery that kept him cold and therefore in his mind, alive. A malicious sneer tightened Riddler's lips, deepening the lines of his face. "How's Gotham's coolest criminal today? Hm? There's no need to give me the cold shoulder you know, I'm only trying to break the ice."

Freeze said nothing. Since coming to Arkham he hadn't spoken a single word, although sometimes he moaned in his sleep loud enough to wake Riddler from his dreams. All the man did was sit silently in his cell, staring into the dark, unmoving.

"I bet you were a riot with women, Freeze. They'd feel comfortable around a man as frigid as you."

When he finally tired of making puns about the broken shell of the man across the corridor – which was as enjoyable as it was ridiculously easy – Riddler retreated back into his cell.

Crouched beside his toilet facilities, a look of mild disgust on his face, he carefully unscrewed the metal grille that covered a ventilation shaft in the wall and set it aside. He'd been working on the escape route for some time, the inside and edges of the shaft had been dramatically widened, but it still wasn't enough.

Withdrawing a spoon that he had taken from the mess hall at lunch from within the sleeve of his jumpsuit – grateful that it hadn't been discovered by Doctor Quinzel – he began to work on widening the shaft with the utensil. Every once in a while he would pause to brush the brick dust from his hands and clothes. Even though he knew that the task was a hopeless one, he chipped tirelessly away at the hole in the wall. He was still working on it deep into the night, when Freeze's moans and the screams of various inmates began to echo along the labyrinthine corridors.

The one thought that kept him going was that he didn't want to die, not here, unlamented and forgotten, murdered by a walking handbag. He was the Riddler, he deserved so much better than that.

* * *

A/N: Well lookee here, Ma, I gone done writ myself a sequel! Ahem, this is the sequel to my fic 'We Could Be Heroes'. I've tried to explain the major events from that, as well as the fic that started it all - From The Inside - as I go along, but it might make things a little clearer if those two were read first. Although I hope that this fic will make sense in its own right. Anyway, as ever, I hope you enjoy!

The lyrics at the beginning are from Gary Numan's song 'Remind Me To Smile', from his album Telekon.


	2. Chapter 2

It was lonely up on the rooftops.

The air tasted of brine and fish, the tang burning the throat of the figure on the rooftops as he inhaled. Although he could hear the sea – throaty gurgles and whispers as it met the land – when he turned and looked in the direction of the sound, all he could see was rooftops. The man-made obscured the natural, offering up an endless sprawling tableau of rusted corrugated iron, rotten wood and crumbling stones. Empty, dark and desolate – that was the stretch of warehouses on Gotham Docks.

It was lonely up there with the sound of the invisible sea and the bite of salt in his nose. It was lonely on the rooftops, even though they were akin to home for him. But that was okay, because Bruce Wayne, the Batman, knew what it was to be lonely in your own home.

A noise from the warren of warehouse walls down below caught his attention. Looking down, his sharp eyes caught movement, the twitch of a door and a splash of furtive light. Hushed voices suddenly cut off. There was his cue.

He responded automatically to his summons. A few running steps brought him to the edge of the rooftops, from which he then launched himself. There was a thrilling moment of vertigo, air rushing past the exposed lower half of his face as he began a sudden descent, and then he spread his arms. At a touch of his gauntlets, the memory fabric of his cape billowed out stiffly behind him, as thick and membranous as the wings of the creature he took his name from. He negotiated the air to land safely on the fire escape of the warehouse the people had disappeared into.

Despite the weight of his musculature and bat-armour, he landed upon the fire escape in a silent crouch, his cape falling softly around him a second later. The cheap metal creaked softly beneath him as he stood. Faced with a grimy window, yellow light struggling to penetrate through it, he rubbed at it with the side of his gauntlet. It didn't improve the view. The layers of dirt had accumulated over too many years to be removed so easily, staining the window both inside and out. It was the story of Gotham. Grunting, Batman pushed the window out of its cheaply ill-fitting frame and climbed into the warehouse.

He found himself standing on an iron catwalk that ran around the walls of the building, ladders placed at various points to allow access from below. Scattered haphazardly around the interior were huge wooden crates that created shadow out of the light thrown down by the dusty lightbulbs.

Standing half-in, half-out of one of the deepest of the shadows was a group of men, the bared flesh of their arms crawling with gang tattoos. Surrounded by smaller crates, some of the men were busily prying them open with crowbars. Batman knew what was in those boxes, and he knew who the men were – drug smugglers. He had been keeping an eye on them for weeks and tonight his hard work would all pay off.

He dropped silently down to the warehouse floor and, using one of the huge crates for cover, began to approach the gang of men.

"Batman, please come in; this is Robin squad. Please relay your position," crackled the police radio at his hip as it hissed into life, breaking the hush and echoing discordantly around the building. Batman stared in helpless frustration at the device. The fools had given him away as completely. They might as well have handed him straight over to the smugglers. Uttering a low curse, he tore the damned police radio off his utility belt and threw it to the floor.

"Batman? Come in, Batman," the radio squawked.

Just as heavy footsteps began to approach him Batman crouched, powerful leg muscles bunching and releasing as he propelled himself upwards. At the height of his leap, he reached up for the gridded base of the catwalk. He almost didn't make it, but with superhuman effort he managed to curl his fingers around the metal and hang there.

Below him, he watched one of the thugs approach the police radio in a run aimed to catch his prey off guard. Coming across nothing, the thug vented his frustration by smashing the radio with the crowbar in his hands, silencing the thing mid-squawk. He turned around looking for the owner and then craned his head back; but by that time Batman had swung across to the top of one of the crates.

"Who's there?" the thug called out, hefting his crowbar.

"Your conscience," a deep-throated growl answered him and then Batman leapt from the top of the crate.

Batman landed forcefully on the criminal's back and together they collapsed to the floor, rolling across it in a brutal parody of embracing lovers. Managing to wrestle his right arm free, the thug lifted his crowbar, preparing to strike his attacker. With a precision of movement that was almost elegant, Batman seized the man's wrist and slammed it against the cornered edge of a crate. The thug screamed as bone smashed against wood and the crowbar fell with a clatter from his broken hand.

Running feet approached and then came to an abrupt halt as the men in the warehouse came across the remnants of the fight. Batman looked up to find himself surrounded by men, the offloaders in muscle shirts and slacks, the dealers in cheap nylon suits. The outer layer didn't matter though – beneath it, criminals were all the same.

Batman flexed his fists.

"Christ, look at his face! Look!" One of the men suddenly exclaimed, his voice tinged with mingled horror and amusement.

The Dark Knight's eyes picked out the speaker as he raised himself from the unconscious thug on the floor. "It's your face that you should be worried about," he promised. Turning his arm on the side, he took aim and released a hail of curved spikes from the mechanism on his forearm. The disengaged weapons ripped rapidly through the air straight towards the faces of the criminals.

Amidst the cries of pain as the spikes hit their targets, Batman plowed into them. His fists and feet moved with a dancer's choreographed grace, wreaking bloody havoc in the space around him. No one escaped his wrath.

*

When Commissioner Gordon burst through the warehouse's main doors a few minutes later, his gun held high and ready beside his face and a squadron of police officers behind him, he found Batman standing calmly surrounded by the bodies of unconscious criminals. The Bat was panting slightly and when he looked up, he seemed mildly dazed.

Gordon pulled up short, lowering his gun and signaling for the officers behind him to stand at ease. Many lowered their weapons only reluctantly, others stayed tense and alert.

The Commissioner's hair was in even more disarray than usual, ruffled by the sea breeze, and his cheeks sported hectic patches of colour. "You didn't answer your radio," he accused between wheezing breaths.

Batman looked down at his utility belt as if unaware that the police radio he had been given was no longer clipped to it.

"And you were told to wait for backup before you engaged the suspects," Gordon added, gesturing to the littered bodies in exasperation.

"You were late."

With that, Batman stepped over one of the felled criminals at his feet and began to walk towards the doors, unconcerned by the officers standing in his way.

As the Bat passed him, Gordon reached out and caught hold of his arm. "Batman…" he began, but then he saw the aggressive glint in the man's shadowed eyes and the livid scar on his cheek that twisted his mouth into a sneering half-smile, so that he eerily resembled the man that had given it to him. Gordon relinquished his hold as swiftly as if he had been burnt, his words dying on his tongue.

The Batman walked silently out into the night.

Wearily, Gordon slipped the fingers of one hand beneath his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose.

"Never should have let that freak into the force. He belongs behind bars, not out here with us," an officer muttered, just loud enough to let Gordon know that he was making a point, goading the Commissioner into admitting defeat.

"Get these men cuffed and into the vans," Gordon replied without moving his hand from his eyes.

* * *

The underground storage space on a Wayne Enterprise construction site that had served as the second batcave was no more. In the long, desolate months that Batman had been in hiding from the law, his faithful butler Alfred had had the space filled with concrete, sealing its secrets away forever.

But with Batman back in business, as a tolerated if not accepted accessory of Gotham PD no less, the bat had needed a new cave. This was easily purchased with Bruce Wayne's billions, under the cover of a dummy company. The new batcave certainly lived up to its moniker. A sprawling underground warehouse that backed onto property the ruins of Wayne Manor stood on, it was as dank and as dark as the original caves. The only thing that kept it from being freezing as well was the heat put out by the powerful electrical equipment that dominated the space.

Alfred stood amongst the poorly-lit shadows with only a serving trolley for company. He never bothered waiting at the penthouse for Bruce anymore. It had stood empty since Batman had faced off with Joker for the last time, that night a month or two ago. Only Alfred's industrious cleaning and organizational skills had kept the building from developing a suspiciously neglected look. Not that Alfred minded spending so much time away from the place – ever since Joker had broken in there and threatened him at gunpoint, he hadn't felt entirely comfortable being there. Its safety had been violated for him.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of the cage lift embarking on its juddering descent. Moments later, the rusted monstrosity touched down and the doors rattled open as Batman stepped out.

"Welcome home, sir." Neatly, Alfred nudged the serving trolley out in front of the masked manhunter, stopping him in his headline for the bank of computers that lined the far wall.

Halted, Batman stared at the other man as if he had never seen him before. Alfred was used to a certain level of distraction in his employer, it was after all to be expected from one who lived a double life, but ever since the night Batman's face had been scarred, the distraction had verged on disassociation. It worried Alfred profoundly, but he let none of his concern show on his face as he looked calmly back at his employer.

"I cooked you dinner." Lifting the lid of the silver platter on the tray, he used it to waft the rich-smelling steam towards the other man.

Batman hardly even glanced at it, replying automatically "I'm not hungry." With that, he brushed past his butler and went to seat himself in front of the computers. The sound of frantically tapping computer keys soon permeated the dank air of the cave.

Alfred looked down at the food he had spent ages preparing in the hopes of tempting his friend back into the world of normal eating habits. He sighed. Yet another meal wasted. "Then perhaps we should consider getting a dog."

"Uh-huh."

"I do believe you're not listening to a word I'm saying, Master Wayne."

"I think I left it round the back."

Only a little while ago, although it was starting to feel like years, this would have been a joke that they would have shared in a smile. But now the joke had turned and sunk its teeth into Alfred's tired flesh. He quietly replaced the lid on the platter and then crossed the space between him and the other man to stand at his shoulder.

Intent upon typing commands into the various keyboards that littered the shelf of a desk he sat at, Batman probably hadn't even heard his friend's approach. Every now and then he would look up at the screens in front of him and give a grunt of frustration. The light from the screens cast a sickly green glow on the pallor of his masked face, cruelly picking out the half-smile turned in Alfred's direction. An outward mark of the man's dual personality, as damning as the burns Harvey Dent suffered in the process that turned him into Two-Face. Alfred hoped that no such metamorphis was lurking in wait for his employer, but it was a weak hope, pale in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Unable to bear it, he looked away, but not before he caught sight of the words on the largest of the computer screens – "Doctor Hugo Strange: No matches found."

It was worse than he had thought. Doctor Strange, as insane as those he had allegedly worked to 'cure' at Arkham Asylum. He was the man who had perverted nature by creating a psychic link between Batman and his arch-nemesis the Joker. Batman hadn't been the same since attending the doctor's funeral, blaming himself for the man's death. Maybe it would have been better if they had been able to find Strange's body. But Batman had become obsessed with the doctor, spending countless hours researching him. So far he'd turned up nothing except for what was to be expected and Alfred thought this might have exacerbated Bruce's steady withdrawal.

"It needs to be faster," Batman was muttering, his voice almost dropping to the soft tones of Bruce Wayne, but not enough to lose the edge of Batman's deep-throated growl. "It needs a faster connection, stronger defenses, software capable of breaking these encryption codes… they're keeping something from me, I know it. We need to outsmart them.

The paranoia was a new and troubling development.

Batman drew his hands back from the keyboards, flexing his fists and cracking his knuckles. His lips tightened. "Order the necessary parts, Alfred."

"In the real world, sir, it's still customary to say 'please'."

It hadn't been said to antagonize, not really, but it seemed to drive Batman into a rage. Snapping his head around to face the man that had raised him from a boy and driving a threatening fist into the nearest wall, the Dark Knight rose with such force that his chair was sent flying. Alfred could barely control the urge to flinch away from the monster that his friend had become.

"Just do it, Alfred," the monster thundered, his face contorted in a snarl of rage. "Or have you forgotten that you're here to obey orders?"

Never before had Bruce raised his voice in such anger to Alfred. Deep down, right at the core of his being, Alfred was frightened by it. He understood for the first time the paralyzing fear some criminals must feel when they looked up to see the Bat baring down on them. But the rest of him was flooded with a cold, calm anger in the face of his employer's temper.

"It's not that, _sir_," he replied with a quiet dignity. "It's just that these days, I don't know who it is I'm taking orders from anymore."

Alfred turned on his heel and walked from the batcave, his head echoing with the feverish tapping of computer keys.


	3. Chapter 3

Morning; just another lazy Sunday mid-morning at Arkham Asylum. Medication had been dispensed, breakfast eaten. The hours before lunch stretching out into eternity, there was nothing to do but laze around, basking in a rare stretch of sunshine that came filtering in through the barred windows.

Riddler however, was not enjoying the sunshine. He was crouched down in front of the gutted ventilation shaft in his cell, shadowed from the day by his cracked wall basin and surrounded by piles of brick dust. He worked like a man possessed, letting his hands become caked with debris until he became almost indistinguishable from the wall. For all the dust around him, the escape route he was working on looked no bigger. A sobbing whimper escaped his throat. All he could think about was what had happened in the mess hall at breakfast.

Engrossed in trying to decipher just what the grey lumpy sludge in his bowl was, Riddler had looked up to find himself under equal scrutiny from Killer Croc. Even across the mess hall, Riddler could see that the reptile-man's eyes blazed with euphoric hatred, his serrated mouth split in a grin. Very slowly, very deliberately, Croc lifted a blunted knife off of the table and pointed it at Riddler, before completing the gesture by miming slitting his own scaly throat with the blade. His slightly pointed tongue lolled out of one corner of his terrifying smile. The men sitting around him – two-bit crooks with more muscle than sanity – snarled laughter like scavengers waiting to feast on a predator's kill.

It didn't take a genius to work out what Croc's gruesome little pantomime meant.

Riddler's life could be measured in mere hours.

About to redouble his efforts on the wall, he froze at the sound of approaching footsteps. Surely Croc couldn't be coming for him, it was impossible. Furtively, Riddler slipped the spoon-cum-shovel up his sleeve and leant back on his haunches, holding onto the lip of the sink for balance as he craned to see who the footsteps belonged to.

The shadow that came creeping down the corridor was too short, too slender to belong to Croc. The footsteps were the brisk click-clack of expensive shoes, not the scrapings of bare taloned feet. Riddler started to relax painfully tensed muscles before realising that the footsteps most probably belonged to someone official, someone who would not be pleased to find an inmate trying to mine his way to freedom. With surprising speed, Riddler disposed of the debris of his labours and placed the ventilation grilled over the hole in the wall. It could no longer be screwed on; the hole was too large to enable that.

He was standing by his cell door and primly dusting off his hands by the time the owner of the footsteps put in an appearance. He found himself looking at a small dapper man, visitor badge pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket, adjusting horn-rimmed spectacles as he read the name printed above the door.

"Edward Nygma, I presume?"

"You could do and you might be right, but it all depends on whom you want to speak to. I find most people are more interested in the Riddler."

"Quite." The man cleared his throat and subtly loosened his tie. Behind his oversized glasses, his eyes were troubled. "I'm Martin Shawbank, a mental health inspector." Reaching into a pocket of his neatly pressed trousers, he withdrew a thick ring of keys and jangled them, somewhat nervously it seemed to Riddler. "May I come in?"

"I won't stop you Mister Shawbank, but I'm afraid you won't find much to inspect in here."

There was a moment of awkward silence in which Riddler could almost hear the cogs in Shawbank's brain turning ponderously, and then there was the familiar sound of keys being turned in the lock of his cell door. As it slid back on rusted hinges, he stood back to allow the other man to enter. In doing so, Riddler took the opportunity to glance up and down the corridor, the solitariness of his visitor suddenly striking him as wrong. Visitors were always accompanied by at least one guard for the safety of everyone involved, but the corridor was deserted. Something was going on. Something unpleasant, no doubt.

The door was locked once again, this time from the inside, trapping Riddler in with the mental health inspector. Keeping a few paces between him and the other man, he gestured for Shawbank to take a seat on the edge of the neatly made bunk, whilst he remained standing by the sink. A criminal Riddler might have been, but that was no reason to forego good manners. Besides, by standing he could keep his escape tunnel out of the sight of prying eyes.

"Since the tragedy that befell Arkham under the… _ahem_… management of Doctor Strange," Shawbank was saying – 'tragedy' referring to the mind experiments Strange had been performing on the asylum's inmates, leading to Oswald Cobblepot's death and the escape of the notorious terrorist Joker – "it has been decided that the facility be subjected to routine checks to make sure that no abuse or maltreatment is being suffered by the inmates. I have been selected to run the first of these checks.

"Are you happy to talk to me about your treatment here?"

Barely listening to the windbag, Riddler waved a dismissive hand, gesturing that whatever it was, it was fine by him. Not only was the king of conundrums adept at solving crossword clues, he was a great reader of men. At first he had been suspicious that this unescorted 'Shawbank' was an outside contact of Croc's, hired to come and dispose of him. True, it wasn't really Croc's style, but the guy did think he was a reptile, so it was reasonable to assume that he was capable of stranger behaviour patterns.

In support of his theory was the fact that Shawbank seemed nervous, even beyond the levels to be expected from anyone locked in a cell with one of the criminally insane – his brow was beaded with sweat and one foot bounced continually up and down in agitation – but Riddler didn't think it was the type of nerves displayed by a contract killer before a job. The man was nervous about something else. His face suggested that his anxiety had something to do with an upset involving a higher authority. Perhaps there had been some unpleasantness that had led to the absence of guards.

That meant Riddler still had a chance at life.

A most wonderful idea had occurred to him as he watched Shawbank's slender hands writhe anxiously around each other as if seeking comfort. A predatory smile that was intended to communicate gratefulness spread across the sharp features of Riddler's face. Saying "Actually, there is something I would like to share with you," he gestured the man over and then stooped down in front of the sink.

He waited until Shawbank's footsteps had come to a stop directly behind him, the man's shadow making a dark shape on the wall.

"I don't see what…" the mental health inspector began to say, but he got no further because with snake-like swiftness, Riddler snatched up the metal grille and in one sinuous movement turned, stood and smashed the impromptu weapon into the man's face.

Blood spurted like some macabre water feature. Shawbank tottered back uncertainly, his eyes rolling back to show bloodshot whites. Then gravity got the upper hand and he crumpled to the floor under its heavy hand. The collar of his shirt and his laminated visitor's badge were spotted red.

Keeping an eye out for guards, Riddler knelt and hastily divested the man of his clothes, exchanging them for his own threadbare orange jumpsuit. He couldn't believe his luck when the suit fit him perfectly, snug and clean against his skin. Even _he_ couldn't have planned this any better. Of course, he deserved no less than to have everything go perfectly his way, and certainly a lesser man than he wouldn't have seen the golden opportunity when it presented itself, much less known what to do with it.

Once dressed, he took the unconscious Shawbank's spectacles and balanced them on his own nose to complete the ensemble. It was enough to make him wish there was a mirror in his cell. He took one last look around to make sure there was nothing else he needed to do, absently cleaning the blood from the visitor's badge with the end of his gaudy tie and then straightening them both up. Everything in order, he let himself out, locked the cell door behind him and strode off down the corridor feeling like a new man.

His escape was going without a hitch until he reached the asylum's reception room. With the doors to freedom in sight, his step faltered and his heart constricted painfully in his chest. Shawbank's spectacles, the bridge already greased with sweat, slipped down his nose and he had to react quickly to keep them from shattering on the floor. The sight that had upset him so was Doctor Harleen Quinzel, perched on the edge of a heavy mahogany desk as she chatted freely with the receptionist, the hem of her somber black skirt hitched up enough to afford a tantalizing glimpse of thigh.

Unbidden, memories of their last 'therapy' session together rose in his mind's eye. Surely his meager disguise wouldn't fool her. She must know every contour of his face off by heart, so thoroughly had her lips explored him.

As he was standing there trying to decide what to do, conscious of time slipping through his fingers like grains of sand, she looked up and directly at him. Their eyes locked and there was a painful moment in which Riddler was convinced that he was about to throw himself at her feet and confess to her in his own cryptic way – 'when is mental health inspector not a mental health inspector?' But then he counted the pens in the holder atop the reception desk and the moment passed. An easy, charming smile took possession of his face.

Doctor Quinzel held his gaze, seeming to silently taunt him with her intimate knowledge. Then she too smiled, dropping one eyelid in a playful wink. "I hope you've had a satisfactory visit, Mister Shawbank?"

He loved the way she said 'mister', the mild Southern twang to her accent transforming it into 'mistah'. He would miss her, he realized with a jolt, but then the sentiment passed as abruptly as it had arrived. There were much more important things to be worrying about – his life, for example.

"I've certainly come away feeling like a different person." Confident in himself once again, he manufactured a cultured laugh. Swelled by his own sense of ego, he strode buoyantly across the reception room, shoulders squared and head held high. His hand had just alighted on the door handle when he heard Doctor Quinzel calling him back. His heart leapt into his mouth. She wasn't going to let him get away with it after all. So much for patient confidentiality.

"Oh, Mister Shawbank?"

He turned to her, adopting a bemused smile. The knuckles of the hand on the door handle turned white. "Yes?"

She gestured to his chest. "We need that back. The visitor's badge I mean."

"Oh of course, my apologies." Unclipping the badge, he crossed the room and handed it to her. As he did, their hands touched. Her eyes lingered on a spot of blood on his stolen shirt that he had neglected to clean off. Then, mercifully, they lifted back to his face.

"No problem-o," she laughed, sketching out a little salute.

Yes, he thought to himself as he stepped outside into the sunshine, I've still got it.

He lingered a moment on the front steps, enjoying the sun on his face, the freedom that he had won himself. He could almost see the rest of his life spread out in front of him like a rich tapestry of opportunity, his for the taking now that he had escaped death at the claws of Killer Croc. Life was good. However, he couldn't stand here thinking about the future forever, he had to go out and get it.

Lazily taking off Shawbank's glasses, he deposited them in a nearby flower bush. The branches rustled, unleashing perfumed scents. Whistling contentedly, Riddler straightened out the lapels of his stolen suit and ran lightly down the steps into the asylum's courtyard.

He didn't notice the roar of the van's engine behind him before it was too late. By the time he heard it, there was nothing he could do about the sack being forced over his head, the rough hands dragging him into the back of the van, or the blunt object colliding forcefully with the back of his head.

His last thought before succumbing to unconsciousness was 'out of the morgue and into the cemetery' and then he knew no more.


	4. Chapter 4

"With the drug smugglers we put away last week out of the picture, the Falcone crime family will be looking for new ways to procure their narcotics shipments. Unfortunately, an… accident has befallen our inside contact with the family, so we will have to use our initiative on this one for now. At least until we're able to find someone else.

"It has been suggested that we try to force everything out into the open with a false business proposal, and at this point I'm open to that option."

Commissioner Gordon stood in front of a briefing room full of seated police officers, the sun too warm on his back as he addressed them. He'd removed his jacket and slung it over the back of a chair and rolled his shirt sleeves up, but still he could feel an uncomfortable bead of sweat inching down the curve of his spine. Leaning both hands on the table in front of him, he looked around the men and women gathered before him, confident in them… but then his eye fell on the dark shadow lurking by the door and for a moment his confidence wavered.

As part of the deal Gordon and Batman had struck in order to remove the vigilante from fugitive status, the Dark Knight was kept up to date on police business in order to allow him to go about his, but only if he attended meetings just as official personnel had to. He never took a seat amongst them, just haunted the doorways, a black and forbidding presence. No one had ever offered him a chair.

Letting Gordon's words wash senselessly over him, knowing instinctively what they were about, the bat closely studied the officers in the room, wondering which of them were on the Falcone payroll. He was convinced that someone on the inside was feeding information to the crime family, sabotaging police missions. Trying to get rid of him. The force turning up late for the drugs bust last week, his radio going off at just the wrong moment, it was too much to be mere coincidence. Batman didn't believe in coincidences, they were for superstitious fools.

His eyes fell on Bullock just as the big detective turned to glare at him. The man's heavyset face folded itself into a scowl at finding himself under scrutiny. Of all the officers in the force, Bullock had been the one to complain most vocally about the vigilante's semi-official inclusion. For a moment the eyes of the two men were locked in combat. Bullock was the first to break, turning back to look at Gordon with a disgruntled jerk of his body.

Batman started to smile, but upon feeling the pull of ridged scar tissue on his cheek, he instantly relaxed his face.

It wasn't that he didn't trust the police. After all, they were only doing the best they could do, trying to build order out of chaos. But Gotham's chaos was like no other city's and the builders were only human. They might have been holding the symbol of law and order, but the ordinary men and women behind it could individually be bribed and broken. Harvey Dent had found this out at the cost of his own life. As much as it troubled Batman, they needed his help, but he couldn't give it whilst restrained by their frailties.

His mind made up, Batman turned and slipped silently out of the door.

* * *

A few streets away, the sunshine breeze played around the eaves of a church, coaxing moans and wails from the masonry. Hulking gargoyles, missing teeth and ears, clung to the guttering, spewing moss from motionless jaws. The stone guardians squatted protectively over a small yard of graffiti-sprayed gravestones and flowers as dead as those beneath the ground. It was perfect.

Inside the stone belly of the religious beast, Joker sat in the confessional box, his hands on his knees. His tongue would occasionally creep out and trace a well-known path around the scars that forced him to smile upon the sunrise of every new endless day. He hardly even felt the hardened, twisted tissue against his tongue anymore. It was just another part of the scenery. He couldn't remember the last time he had tasted smooth, unmarred flesh.

Turning his head, he peered through the complex lattice-work that separated priest from confessor, studying the interlocking crests and the darkness beyond them. His fierce gaze burned the shadows. He could feel them flinching away from him, horrified.

Red-painted lips peeling back from neglected teeth in something that was neither a smile nor a snarl, the clown curled his fingers familiarly through the gaps in the lattice work and crooned "Are you there?"

And then he laughed because he knew the answer. The darkness on the other side was complete. Laughing like he would never stop, tears streaming down his cheeks, he clutched and tore at the dark priest's robe he had clothed himself in, leaning over as he choked on his mirth in the emptiness of the church.

* * *

Gordon followed the noises down to the locker room, where the officers stored street clothes and the personal effects that got them through the day. He could have kicked himself for not noticing Batman's absence from the meeting sooner. He'd only noticed upon drawing the meeting to a close roughly five minutes ago.

Coming down the last steps onto the concrete floor, he flicked a switch to bathe the room in artificial light. One shadow refused to be dispersed. Gaudily highlighted, the patch of darkness clung to a bank of lockers, surrounded by doors that were hanging open, their locks violated and their contents hanging out. The shadow glanced up with disinterest, and then back down at the light brown jacket it was turning over in gauntleted hands.

"What – What are you doing?"

Batman turned the pockets of the jacket inside out and, finding nothing, carelessly stuffed the garment back into the locker it had been taken from. "Looking."

"What for?" Gordon blustered in exasperation.

"Evidence."

As if unaware of the Commissioner's shock, or even his presence, Batman methodically moved onto the next door and began to pick the lock. Gordon's hand fell on his forearm, stopping him. The bat looked up into eyes filled with muted anger. But there was something else in them too. Something that might have been concern… or pity…

"Batman, I know the past few weeks must have been difficult for you. I knew when I first offered you the chance to make your activities more legitimate that it would be a rocky transition for both of us. But you've got to remember that you're part of a team now. You should act as if you believe in it."

The Dark Knight held the gaze of the other man, but let his hand fall away from the locker. "I believe in the truth, Commissioner."

"And truth involves trust." Gordon sighed and looked away, as if searching for the right words with which to continue. "I've always trusted you. Even in the face of higher authority I've kept you in on the loop, given you information, traded ideas with you. I've always accommodated you in what is, basically, illegal vigilantism.

"But we've both seen that it doesn't work. You've earned my trust, but now, in order to successfully continue, you have to show the public that you can be trusted. That means no more hiding in the shadows, no more working outside the law. You've got to work with us and that means learning to trust us as much as I've learned to trust you."

There was a moment in which Gordon thought his words had truly made an impact and he was glad to have finally said what had been on his mind for a while. The Dark Knight's shoulders relaxed, his head bowed as he surveyed the personal effects scattered about on the floor at his feet. Gordon felt a smile blooming on his face. Things might just work out okay after all.

But then Batman had to say "I think one of your men is working for Falcone."

"What? That's impossible, I – I'd have noticed if…"

"You shouldn't rely so much on trust, Commissioner."

His figurative bombshell dropped, it became apparent that Batman had nothing more to say to the man he had come closest to considering a friend. He turned and walked away, the echo of his footsteps dull and muted. Gordon was left alone with nothing but his troubled thoughts.


	5. Chapter 5

It is commonly accepted knowledge that when experiencing the imminent approach of one's death, one's life flashes before the eyes of the doomed. Riddler wasn't sure, but he thought at that moment he might have been willing to trade the continuation of his life for the possibility of being able to see something, anything. He had no idea how long the burlap sack had been over his head, turning his world to darkness, but he knew it had been more than long enough.

His body ached so much from rattling around the back of the van, his head spinning so dizzyingly from the erratic motion, that he didn't realize the van had come to a stop until he felt rough hands grabbing him by the forearms and hauling him out. He might have struggled against his abductors, had his muscles not been suffering from cramp so painful that he collapsed.

No move was made to break his fall, but Riddler felt his knees crack against something hard and rectangular. His vision useless, his arms pinwheeling haplessly, there was nothing he could do except fall headlong over the object. Luckily, the ground was soft grass that served to break his fall.

Picking himself up with stiff movements, his fingers groped for the object over which he had taken a dive. His fingertips made contact with an upright slab of rough-hewn stone, with what might have been letters carved into its surface. His mind raced to piece this information together into a coherent picture of his surroundings.

"No," he whispered upon realizing that he was knelt before a gravestone. Helplessly, he lifted his head. Louder, more panicked: "No!"

Before Riddler had a chance to elaborate his negations, he was dragged to his feet and manhandled forwards. He stumbled over clumps of overgrown grass, held carelessly between two strong pairs of hands. Brought to an abrupt halt, he picked up the sound of a heavy door being wrenched open and then his footsteps were echoing sharply and the chill of abandoned buildings was sinking through his clothes to needle his skin.

The sack was removed from his head, leaving him blinking in the sudden onslaught of light.

He was standing in a church. A blur near the cracked and chipped altar caught his attention. As his eyes adjusted to the light, the blur became a man. He sat before an old dressing table, looking surreally out of place in the house of worship. Colourful light filtered in through the windows that hadn't succumbed to vandals' stones, reflecting off the dressing table's spider-web cracked and dirty mirror, centering painfully in his eyes. Despite the disadvantage, he could still see that the man was apparently unconcerned by the intrusion, absorbed as he was in whatever he was doing in front of the mirror.

Wondering at what strange rabbit hole he had stumbled down, Riddler felt himself being rudely prodded forwards. A glance over his shoulder revealed that the faces of his abductors were hidden behind clown masks. A new piece of the unpleasant puzzle dropped into place. Riddler swallowed nervously.

One of the Hallowe'en-faced men behind him cleared his throat in the manner of one who wishes for attention, but the man before the mirror simply leaned in closer to his reflection. From this vantage point, Riddler could see that the face in the mirror was being steadily obscured behind carelessly applied white, red and black greasepaint. The last time Riddler had seen that face, it had been above the orange of an Arkham Asylum jumpsuit; but now that seemed to have been traded in for the black of a priest's cassock complete with the traditional white dog collar.

"Joker," he spoke up, his voice trembling with equal parts anger and fear. "Just like a bad penny as ever I see."

The green-haired urban terrorist tipped his head slightly to one side, as if considering how best to respond to the other man's greeting. He pursed his lips at his own painted reflection, dipped two fingers into a pot of red greasepaint and then smeared the colour over the ridges of scar tissue that gave him his permanent smile.

"Ah-ah-ah, is that any way to talk to a man of the, heh, cloth?" He returned; his voice a squirming, mocking thing that sickened Riddler to the pit of his stomach.

"You're so full of holes that you're fit only for the scraps pile. What do you want with me, you prancing pierrot?"

Joker sprang from his chair like a malevolent jack-in-the-box, the coiled energy of his body terrifying to witness. His hand whipped out to snatch a knife from where it had been left plunged blade-first into an open jar of make up. Smears of red sprayed the mirror. The madman stalked towards Riddler, a hellish nightmare haunting the house of worship.

If it hadn't been for the two men standing behind him, Riddler would have risked turning tail and running. As it was, he had no choice other than to stand his ground as the painted face came within inches of his.

Joker stood smiling humourlessly for a moment, invading the other man's personal space with relish. Lifting the knife between them, he weighted it with the adept fingers of one hand, testing its balance. His yellowed teeth revealed themselves in a feral grin of sudden intensity, the fever-glare of his eyes reflected in the blade of his weapon.

"Want to know how I got these scars?"

Despite the fear gripping him, making it difficult to concentrate, Riddler turned his fine-tuned mind to remembering what he knew about Joker's character. During the time he had been incarcerated in Arkham with the madman, he had made a point to study him, as he did everyone he came into contact with. He liked to examine the pieces people were made from, find out how they worked. From his observations he had detected the confidence Joker had in his ability to terrify, how integral to himself he thought his power of intimidation.

That was why Riddler brought his own hand up sharply to knock the other man's away, snapping irritably "Which version? I think I've heard them all."

There was a moment of uncertain silence in which Joker's eyes narrowed to slits, his knuckles whitening to match the death-pallor of his face. Riddler felt his triumph bleed away into fear as the clown began to scream high-pitched laughter.

Like a serpent, Joker struck and Riddler felt cold steel in his mouth. Wide-eyed, he stared unseeing at his attacker as the salty taste of his own blood titillated his tongue with the promise of more, so much more to come. He thought he might choke.

"Not this version, this is a new one. This is the one where you get _your_ scars."

Unable to help himself, Riddler whimpered. Thankfully, this seemed to placate the clown prince of crime, for he withdrew the blade and casually wiped it clean on the cloth of his cassock. Riddler wondered sickly what other stains were hidden by the dark material.

The blade clean, Joker looked up and for the first time seemed to notice the two other clown-faced men sharing his church. The tip of his tongue found the corner of his lips, tasting his smile. "This man is in need of… _confession_." He announced to his henchmen. There was a pause and then he raised his free hand at the men with contemptuous impatience. "Ah, _shoo_."

The men didn't need telling twice.

"You must be tired from your long journey, child. Can I get you a drink? The blood of Christ, perhaps?" Smiling dangerously, shrugging on the role of concerned Father-confessor as easily as he had donned the clothes, he slung his knife-arm companionably around Riddler's shoulders. Beneath the dusty cloth, his skin was burning hot. The knife in his hand tickled his captive's cheek with maddening familiarity.

"You could try getting to the point," Riddler returned through gritted teeth as he was lead towards the poorly-lit confession box.

"I would expect a man of your intelligence to choose his words more carefully." The knife blade pressed slightly harder against Riddler's cheek.

With casual violence, Joker shoved his sacrificial lamb into one of the confessionals before entering the stiflingly small cubicle himself. The two men were so close that they were breathing the same fetid air, hot and dusty as a locked-up attic of shameful secrets. Trying to put space between them, feeling his chest constrict painfully, Riddler took a couple of steps backwards and ended up tripping over. He landed on a narrow wooden bench placed for the comfort of sinners as they unburdened their souls, the breath knocked from him by the sudden jolt.

Lost in whatever passed for his mind, Joker ignored all of this, studying the blade in his hands with intense interest. He toyed with it, pressing his index finger against its tip until a bright bead of blood appeared. Satisfied, he looked up and the gaze that fell on Riddler was even darker than the shadows in the cramped booth.

"Why do men feel compelled to confess their sins?" Joker embarked upon what was plainly, to Riddler's mind anyway, a well-crafted theatrical speech. "It's because men of God tell them they must, but _why? _What can the priests possibly have to gain from listening to men whine all day? It's the same reason that the cops interview criminals – they want knowledge that they couldn't possibly get for themselves." He paused suddenly, softly making a popping sound with his lips. "You're, ah, you're not _looking_ at me, Riddler. Look at me."

Having noticed this preoccupation before, Riddler somewhat reluctantly lifted his head. In the dim light, he saw the clown's make up for the first time as nothing but that – just a mask behind which hid a face that wanted nothing more than to escape from the smile and into repose. It was a weary face. The burning eyes seemed nothing more than a reflected shadow of the intensity they had once possessed. The depth of their emptiness frightened Riddler, but he didn't dare look away.

Unaware of the scrutiny he was under, Joker continued to speak. "So the priests and the cops, they make up rules to persuade people to tell them what they know. The weak and the unimaginative obey because they can't work out for themselves that what they know is just for them, and just like them, you're going to confess your every sin to me."

Perhaps he was ill, Riddler thought to himself, and then all thoughts of masked weariness disappeared from his head as the insult filtered through his consciousness. Bristling, he snapped "I'm renowned for my ability in solving riddles, but your nonsensical rambling has stumped even me. What are you driveling on about?"

Joker fixed the other man with a baleful glare, carefully pronouncing "The _Batman_."

"You're the certified bat-catcher. Why should I get involved?"

"I'm _tired_, Riddler." Wound tense with anger, the madman leant forwards, slamming his open palm against the wood just beside Riddler's head. The whole confessional box shivered. "Just lately, I've been having trouble seeing the funny side of things." His voice rose in a kind of disbelieving wonder, laughter balancing uncertainly on the tip of his tongue. "I – I don't get the joke anymore.

"It's all because of that man at Arkham, Doctor Strange. He _experimented _on me – poked around in my brain and hooked parts of it up with Batman's until we shared our every waking thought. I knew everything there was to know about him… I _was_ him. But then Strange died and now everything has gone wrong. I used to know something important, very important, but now I've forgotten. You're going to remember for me."

Riddler wondered if perhaps not only the murderer were ill, but also that he had lost yet another marble and was now following down the path of so many other psychotics into the realms of paranoid delusion. It was sad of course, but not totally unexpected. Still, he was interested in finding out more.

"You told me once that you would find out Batman's identity at any cost."

So that was what this was all about. Riddler bit his tongue, cursing it and wishing at that moment that he could bite it off altogether as he squirmed uneasily on the seat of sinners. True, he lived for the day he would be able to lock intellectual horns with Batman's formidable mind, but the thought of doing so under Joker's murderous eye left him cold. "My price has just gone up."

"If you're good at something, never do it for free," Joker muttered to himself with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. Turning his knife point on the other man he said with menacing reassurance "I'm not the one who's going to be paying it."

"I see your point…" Riddler gulped. It seemed he was to have no choice in the matter. "I'll solve the riddle for you. But I'll need my suit."

He couldn't work without the green question-mark emblazoned suit he had designed specifically for his criminal alter-ego. It wouldn't be the same without it; he wouldn't be able to get into the right frame of mind. To work, he needed everything to be perfect and in pristine ordered detail.

Joker broke into high-pitched, mocking peals of laughter. "Little Riddley needs his romper suit before he can go play!" he spluttered between giggles before abruptly dropping his voice to a business-like monotone. "You'll get your suit."

That said, he turned and walked from the confessional, leaving Riddler to wonder just what his big mouth had gotten him into.


	6. Chapter 6

Gotham is not a place where happiness thrives. It is a city where those who can afford to turn their back in the plight of the poor, where the lives of parents are snatched away before the eyes of their children; it is a ripe breeding place of corruption. The people who dwell there have witnessed many acts of horrendous violence and have participated in such acts themselves. Batman had witnessed it all and yet still he believed in the basic goodness of humanity.

However, looking down at the street below, he was finding it increasingly difficult to hold on to that belief.

"Heard you were caught going through our lockers," A voice, thickened by a mouthful of chocolate, spoke up beside Batman's elbow. The voice belonged to Detective Bullock, who was currently assigned to Batman for the duration of their mission.

Not prepared to be drawn into a pointless argument, especially not with the headache he'd had since this morning pounding in his temples, the Dark Knight kept his gaze fixed firmly out of the window, not even deigning to turn and look at the heavyset detective. Below, the street crowded with pedestrians, their angry shouts penetrating even the room at the top of City Hall in which Batman stood. Some carried signs that couldn't be read from this height, but that undoubtedly carried messages of hate and hostility aimed at certain masked manhunters. Small scuffles occasionally broke out amongst the gathered protestors, upon which a few police officers would break away from the surrounding barrier and move in to calm the fighters.

"I'll tell you this now," there was an enticing crackle as Bullock gestured with his half-eaten candy bar, "the boys ain't going to stand for much more of your high-and-mighty behaviour. Ain't none of us that's happy to be working with a freak like you."

"The feeling's mutual," Batman muttered, adjusting the standard issue bincoluars and sweeping either end of the street with them. His sharp eyes picked out the police escort vehicles just driving out of sight, the Mayor's car ensconced in their midst. At least they were safe. To the Mayor, the evacuation was probably an inconvenience he could do without, but it was only prudent to get him to safety with a mob of protestors gathered outside the building he worked in.

"What're you playing at anyway? Coming on board with us like this."

Evidently, Gordon hadn't thought it necessary to explain the situation in full to his officers.

Setting down the binoculars on the windowsill, Batman glanced over his shoulder at the attic room he stood in, hemmed in by police equipment. He was just in time to se Bullock crumpling up his empty wrapper in one hand and tossing it nonchalantly onto the floor. A grimace of distaste twisted his face until he found the discipline to conceal it. of course, it was obvious why he had been stationed up here out of the way – the sight of him would drive the already volatile crowd into a frenzy, considering the newspaper stories that had recently circulated about his involvement with Joker – but he just wished that he had been assigned a more… suitable partner.

"I made a promise," he answered simply.

"Uh-huh." Bullock dragged a stained handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and used it to mop up sweat from his stubbled jowls. "Hot up here."

The bat was distracted from the exchange of witty repartee with his partner by an authoritative shout from down below. Automatically, he leant out just enough to give himself a better view without coming into danger of being seen. He caught sight of the Commissioner standing by the entrance doors of the building, megaphone to his lips and one hand resting on the holster of his gun. Gordon looked up. The sunlight reflected off the lenses of his glasses and pierced Batman's vision, lancing straight through his aching head like a spear. He winced against the intrusion, feeling a sudden rush of nostalgia for his moonlit patrols. Despite his hampered vision, he caught Gordon's hand signal. Nodding affirmation, he ducked back inside and turned to face his partner.

"Stand by for action. They think there might have been a security breach."

Bullock regarded him intently. "And your little bat ears… What's up with that?"

His patience sorely tried, the Dark Knight snapped "I suggest you dedicate your investigative powers to the task at hand, _Detective_."

They had been stationed up here in this airless attic room as back up in case one of the protestors managed to slip past the police barrier and into City Hall. The police department had been anonymously tipped off earlier in the day that some of the protestors were planning to break in and sabotage whatever they could get their hands on as a way of registering their displeasure with the way their civil servants were running things. However, most of the important activity was taking place on the streets outside, hence the small guard.

"Ah, keep your cape on," Bullock rumbled in his New Yorkian drawl, already rooting through his pockets in search of more chocolate. "We ain't gonna get to see no action."

At that moment, they were interrupted by the door being kicked down.

Turning as one, they came face to face with a bedraggled man in a dirty parka, wild of eye and unsteadily waving a shotgun around. "You bastards," he howled frenziedly swinging the barrel of the gun between the two crime-fighters. "You're never content are you? Why can't you just let things alone for once, huh? Let us get on with our lives." The man stank of cheap alcohol.

"Then I suppose you wouldn't cause this action?" Batman scowled out of the side of his mouth at the detective before taking a few small steps towards the gunman, hands held out placatingly. In a louder, more neutral voice he said "Put the dun down and we can talk about this."

With an inarticulate cry of frustration, the man turned the gun wildly on Bullock and squeezed off a shot before either of the two men could react. Shouting the detective's name in warning, Batman turned to see the shot go wide, impacting with the wall in a cloud of brick dust. Thankful for the shooter's inebriation and unsteady hands, the Dark Knight lowered his gaze to make sure the detective was unharmed, only to find a gun being leveled at his face.

"Bullock?" he inquired in a slow growl. "What are you doing?"

The detective thumbed the safety off his gun with a reverberating click. Turning his head aside, he spat thickly on the floor. "I'm getting you outta the way. You snooped one locker too many, Bat-boy."

So his suspicions had been correct after all – Bullock was working against the law. Instinctively, Batman glanced towards the open window. The detective caught his look and, misinterpreting it, gave an ugly laugh.

"The Commish ain't gonna help out his pet bat today. He's got his hands full down there. What's one gun shot gonna be to him in all that ruckus? Nothin'. He won't even blink.

"And when they find you cold and dead on the floor, they'll also find the unlicensed shotgun that killed you and the heroic detective who tried to save your life at great personal risk to himself, bound and gagged in the corner. All compliment of my pal here. Say 'hello', Joe."

The bedraggled protestor grinned with sober malice and false modesty.

What compelled people, Batman wondered wearily, to waste their energy in so proudly explaining the schemes with which they planned to end his life? It was a costly mistake, and yet no one ever seemed to learn from it. Neither did the detective's brash voice do anything to soothe his headache, which had begun to throb rhythmically at the base of his skull, sending dull waves of pain rolling through his head.

"Be seein' you, Bat-boy," Bullock said and pulled the trigger.

Moving so fast that he made it appear effortless, the Dark Knight dropped to one knee and swung his free leg out, knocking the big detective off balance. The bullet ripped through the air above his head. As Bullock struggled to get up with all the grace of a beached whale, Batman dropped a knee on the man's groin, extolling an agonized howl of chocolate-scented breath. With no pity whatsoever, the masked crime-fighter seized Bullock by the front of his sloppily-ironed shirt and dragged him up into a sitting position.

His hands shaking, the detective attempted to squeeze off another shot, but before he could Batman sharply brought his armoured forehead into contact with his. The police officer fell bonelessly back to the floor, consciousness knocked from him.

The Dark Knight turned and found the frightened eyes of Bullock's accomplice on him.

"Who's Bullock working for?" he demanded, advancing on the cowering man and knocking his shotgun to the floor with one powerful swipe of his gauntleted hand.

"I ain't talking!" You don't scare me!" The hired distraction wailed as he was seized by the wrists in an unbreakable grip and dragged towards the open window.

"Then you're stupider than you look." With a small grunt of effort, Batman pushed his hapless captive out the window. The man's brief cry of fear was cut short as the bat leant out and caught hold of his hands, halting his descent. The man's feet kicked helplessly above a crowd too absorbed in violence to take any notice of his predicament.

"You wouldn't," he pleaded desperately, his voice wavering on the edge of hysteria. He gripped Batman's hands tight enough to hurt even him. "You don't do that sort of thing."

"Don't I?" The Dark Knight abruptly tore one hand free from the other man's. A part of him was shocked and disgusted to find that in place of the grim smile of satisfaction he might once have worn in a situation such as this, there was a grin of pure savage enjoyment on his marred face. For a moment he was terrified of himself, of what he was becoming, but then he looked down into the streaming face of the small-time crook handing out of the window and the feeling of horror disappeared.

"Start talking."

"I _can't_. You don't understand, you don't know what he'll _do_ to me if he finds out."

Frowning slightly, Batman reached down with his free hand and had it gratefully grabbed hold of by the dangling man. Powerful biceps contracting, he hauled the man up until their noses almost touched.

"Who?"

"It used to be they'd just kneecap a snitch or anchor him to the bottom of the sea, and that was okay. You know where you are with death. But this new guy, he _does_ things, he does them to your _mind_. I don't want that, I don't want any of that."

A flutter of excitement stretched its wings, getting sickeningly caught in Batman's throat. "Who? Who will do things to your mind?"

Feverish, drunk on terror, the man's dilated pupils fixed on Batman as if really seeing him for the first time. A tongue, white with the decay of prolonged dehydration, attempted unsuccessfully to wet cracked lips. Shallow chest hitching, he opened his mouth to reply and then a red flower bloomed violently on his chest.

Together, man and bat glanced down at the hole that had been punched through the criminal. Hot blood sprayed the bat's face, more of the stuff trickled freely from the dying man's mouth. The shot could have come from anywhere, but Batman was convinced that there was only one place it had ever been intended to end up. The man's life had been over before he'd even set foot into the room.

Lifting his head, the unfortunate man a dead weight in his hands, the masked manhunter scanned the densely packed crowd below for the executioner. But the activity was too frantic, the scene too agitated to provide any useful clue. The endeavor was a pointless one.

Disgusted, Batman let the corpse fall into the crowd below. Screams of shock and horror grating against his headache, he swung himself up onto the rooftops and walked away unseen.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Sorry I've been ages in uploading this; I've been really busy and haven't had much time for writing. But things are slightly calmer now and hopefully I will be able to get back to a more regular updating schedule. So anyway, if you can still remember what was going on in this fic - Enjoy! XD_

"No; no more deals. I will not listen to proposition."

In the social circles he moved in, he was known simply as The Chechen. Anyone who knew his true name, the one he had been given at birth, was either dead or separated from him by the sea and poverty. That was fine by him. As far as he was concerned, the more someone knew about their enemy, the less they feared him and the easier it would be for _his_ enemies to find him. More than ever, the Chechen had come to value anonymity.

He wondered now, as uneasily as he had the first time, how the man sitting opposite him had managed to track him down. They had first met a month or two ago in this very same restaurant on the seedier side of Gotham, the Chechen's favourite place to eat. He still hadn't been able to work out which of his men had given away his secrets to the strange man sitting at his table. Glowering darkly, the Chechen swallowed his mouthful and viciously speared a meatball on the end of his fork.

"I made mistake once to get involved with that _freak_ and look what it got me," he snarled around a mouthful, gesturing at his face with the utensil in his hand. What had once been an ordinary – if somewhat sallow – face had been disfigured beyond recognition. One dark eye, the only one that still worked, glared malevolently out from between gaping caverns of mottled scar tissue, dragging diagonally across his features. His blind eye was nothing more than a shriveled, milky cataract, punctured by the teeth of his own dogs. He set the shredded remains of his lips firmly, his chin tilted up defiantly, just daring the other man to make comment.

Impassive as usual, the man said nothing, unimpressed.

The Chechen found himself spooked by the man sitting opposite. He should have known better than to agree in the first place to strike any kind of deal with him, but he owed the twisted freak a favour and the Chechen prided himself on always repaying a debt. Unable to look his fellow-diner in the face, the mobster lowered his head and mechanically shoveled up forkfuls of authentic Italian spaghetti and meatballs. This was the kind of restaurant he preferred to frequent – mob-run places with no imagination, still serving the same meals Al Capone would have eaten.

Not a day passed that the Chechen didn't hear his own words echoing mockingly back at him: "I want to hear proposition." Always, the memory was accompanied by the painted clown face of a psychopath, a warped creature from the new world, holding the promise of the way things used to be, the boatman that would ferry them back to a simple time when men were men and not flying rodents.

Not a night passed that he didn't wake up drenched in a cold sweat, the promise turned into a primal scream of "Why don't I cut you up into little pieces and feed you to your pooches?" In his dreams he would again be dragged away, feel the cruel knife on his face, the teeth of his dogs driven mad by the smell of blood, rending flesh; again he would fight for his life, the strength of his fear enabling him to overpower the ravenous beasts and escape death at their slavering jaws. Now that he had been given a second chance, he was not prepared to sell him life so easily. He had learnt his lesson; never again would he get involved with the new breed of criminal. They were strange and they were dangerous and they valued idols that were not made of gold.

"That is a shame indeed," the man opposite said in his eerily calm voice, and the Chechen wasn't sure whether the man meant his scarred face, or refusal to cooperate any further. "But I believe your brother would have thought differently."

"My brother?" The mobster worked up a thick wad of saliva and spat passionately on the floor. A passing waiter, as used to carrying firearms as he was plates, aimed a glare in his direction, but the Chechen ignored him. "Always you remind me about my brother, but you seem to forget that he is _dead_."

"A hazard of your profession. It has nothing to do with me."

Something in the way his unwelcome associate said the former sentence and the way his spectacles caught the light, turning his eyes to silver buttons, deeply unnerved the Chechen. Finding he no longer had an appetite, he put down his fork and pushed his plate away. He'd never seen the man opposite him eat anything.

The Chechen shouldn't have been scared of the other man, surrounded as he was by familiar gun-toting faces and especially considering that his adversary was wheelchair-bound, but still he was teetering on the brink of terror. Gritting his teeth, drawing on deep reserves of anger to keep the fear away, he said "And I want nothing more to do with you."

If he had been expecting an emotional response for the other man, he would have been deeply mistaken. As it was, he was unsurprised. The man's face remained impassive; any passion that might have been betrayed by his eyes was hidden behind the reflective lenses of his glasses. The Chechen wouldn't have been surprised, however, if the eyes were as dead and cold as the face. The only indication that the man gave of having heard anything at all was a quiet, disappointed sigh.

"You know that I would like nothing more than to oblige, but there is still the small matter of redressing the balance between us."

At this, the Chechen's anger rose in his throat like bitter bile, chasing any lingering traces of fear from his system. He vented it in a loud thump as his clenched fist struck the table. "I owe you _nothing_," he snarled as his plate rattled perilously close to the edge of the table. The berated man didn't so much as flinch. "I have given you money, access to my men, I bribed that detective to kill Batman like you ask, but still you want more. I say 'no more.' My debt to you is cleared." His voice rising on each word as his rage built up behind it, bolstering him, he looked around for a waiter to eject the troublesome lunatic from the restaurant, but strangely none of them were in sight.

"A share in your paltry drugs money and the head of an un-killable man in not payment enough, not for what I did for you, not for what was done to me. All I ask is one more thing – for you to find the one called Joker and bring him to me so that he may know the suffering that he brought upon me. In return, you shall have the promise of my unquestioning service for as long as you may need it."

The Chechen shook his head stubbornly. "No." Nothing in the world or beyond would be enough to persuade him to be involved in any way with the Joker again, even if that involvement was helping someone seek retribution from the clown. Common sense in the case cancelled out the pervasive thirst for vengeance. One hand went discreetly to the gun tucked in his waistband, intending to escort the man off the premises himself.

It was at that moment that his associate's resolve to conduct business calmly and quietly seemed to break. His eyes flashed dangerously behind his spectacles, his nostrils flared and in a frightening, cracked voice he screeched "After what that clown did to my body – to my _mind_ – you would deny me this?"

At the sound, several diners abandoned the feast on the table in favour of feasting their eyes instead. However, as seasoned diners they soon lost interest in the cries of the wheelchair-bound man. Only the Chechen's attention remained riveted as his fellow diner's eyes began to roll uselessly in their sockets, the wasted chest hitching as it struggled to hitch in death-rattle breaths. It hadn't always been this way and the first time he had witnessed the spectacle, the change in his associate had deeply shocked the Chechen. But now, having had several business transactions terminated in the same abrupt manner, he was immune to the horror is seeing a once healthy man writhe in frantic throes of agony like a malfunctioning machine.

The Chechen moved his hand away from his gun and placed both hands palm down on the table. He was in no danger from this man.

After what might have been an eternity, the man opposite the mobster slumped lifelessly in his chair. As limp as bed-ridden death, he slouched awkwardly, a thin line of saliva running from one corner of his slack mouth. The aftermath of a minor nosebleed stained his upper lip. The Chechen found himself hoping viciously that this time the man would not recover from his fit.

He was contemplating a dream of freedom and uninterrupted meals when another man appeared noiselessly at the table. Raising his eyes to a face distorted by steroid-induced muscles, the Chechen nodded stiffly in greeting.

"Mack. Good to see you."

Mack said nothing. He didn't say much at all these days, not since the man in the wheelchair had gotten hold of him. He was a changed man to the one who had once been loyal to the Chechen. Shirt material straining against grossly exaggerated muscles, Mack placed a hand on the unconscious man's shoulder, looked down at him with a kind of brutish concern.

He glanced back up at the Chechen and his grey-blue eyes had become as hard and flat as a stone eroded for centuries on a wave-beaten shore. They were not a sane man's eyes; they were no man's eyes at all. In a voice hoarse with disuse he intoned "All your men will die."

The Chechen had not survived as long as he had without knowing a serious threat when he heard one, and someone who could be so monstrous as to turn Mack into the pitiful creature he was now was worth taking seriously; but still the Chechen looked levelly into the insensible face of the wheelchair-bound man and insisted "No deal, Strange. I've cleared my debt."

There was nothing left to say. The Chechen watched silently as the wrecked body of Doctor Hugo Strange was wheeled from the restaurant.

* * *

The night outside was not as dark as the batcave. Batman hadn't slept for over twenty-four hours. He sat in the same position he had taken up since entering the cave several hours ago – in front of the bank of computers, alone with his obsessions. His legs were numb, his fingers aching and his head was pounding.

Giving his eyes a break from the vaguely green-tinged computer screens with their reams of useless data, he glanced up at the portion of free space he had placed his cowl upon when the suffocating heat of wearing it had become too much for him. It gazed sightlessly back at him, empty mouth wrenched open in a mute scream. Like an avenging angel from some drug-induced hallucination it seemed to pulse disconcertingly with a life of its own.

Groaning softly, Batman scrubbed at his hair and felt the unnatural warmth of his scalp against his fingertips. He dragged his hands down to his eyes and attempted to massage the fatigue from them. Repetitive strain syndrome – the effect of flicking his eyes back and forth across the screens for hours on end – that was why the gaping mouth of his cowl appeared to be opening and closing in silent condemnation. When he opened his eyes again the mask had ceased to move, even if its outline was a little fuzzy in comparison to his normally sharp vision.

The task that he had set himself seemed impossible and, in more lucid moments, it even appeared absurd, but Batman's turbulent life had taught him patience and that determination reaped its own rewards. And so he would continue.

Just as he was about to lower his hands to the keyboard once again, he was disturbed by a noise. It was reminiscent of voices half-overheard on a poorly tuned radio, filtered through layers of static until they become eerily alien in nature. Crooked and ready fingertips hesitation in the air, the bat cocked his head, coaxing his ears to pick up even the minutest of sounds from his surroundings. There were definitely voices here with him in the sanctity of his cave.

Rising as silently as a specter's shadow from his chair, he carefully surveyed the bleak emptiness surrounding him. The only light came from the computers, weak and alien. His night-trained eyes penetrated the darkness, but found only the familiar hulking outlines of his crime-fighting paraphernalia.

"Alfred?" he ventured, not expecting a reply.

There was a brief lull in the sounds, as if his voice had frightened them away, and then they began again in earnest. Half human voice, half crackling static of phantom words, it seemed to creep around the inside of the crime-fighter's head with sandpaper spider feet.

Without bothering to switch on any lights, Batman began a systematic search of the cavernous underground expanse for the source of the noise. He opened the closet in which his bat-armour stood when not in use to find it empty, found the interior of the Batmobile deserted and the possibility of noise outside impossible. With each fruitless avenue of investigation abandoned, the sound grew yet more insistent, as if becoming agitated with his failure. At first he thought that perhaps it was getting louder the closer he came to the source, but a few circuits of the cave with the noise never altering its whispery volume proved him wrong.

As the source of the noise continued to elude him, the Dark Knight felt increasingly frustrated. His skin was damp and prickly beneath the restrictive contours of his suit. Beneath the half-formed words the mercilessly teased his rationality he could hear his own breath coming in ragged gasps.

He became convinced – in a burning and murky way that was unnatural to him – that the voices were coming from concealed police equipment. Of course, they had discovered the location of his batcave and installed devices in order to spy on him. And after that talk Gordon had given him about trust as well. He knew that the police would never trust him as he wanted them to. Instead, they would spy on him whilst all the while trying to bend him into the correct shape to enfold him into their ranks. They would have him corrupt as Gotham's poor broken heart.

"I know you're here!" he shouted, feeling serpentine tendons rise on his neck.

The abrupt silence bristled with unspoken menace, the hunter now discovered considering his options. Batman wasn't about to be dissuaded from his search so easily. Weapons and sophisticated technology clattered to the floor as he overturned drawers and ransacked filing cabinets. Beneath the atmosphere of frantic destruction he wrought, the noise took up its unformed chant once again – only now it was weaker, intermittent.

Batman left no corner unexplored, desperate to prove that the sound originated from somewhere other than his own head. He even took apart his expensive custom-built computers, amidst sparks that leapt up like futuristic hellfire as he tore at wires in search of hidden espionage devices.

Finally, exhausted and empty-handed, he sank down onto a chair.

No longer could he hold back the thought that the last time he had heard voices in his head had been when that sick psychiatrist Strange had created the psychic link between himself and the Joker. He felt the same nausea and sense of violation that had accompanied the terrorist's insinuating voice. But Strange was dead – Batman had attended the man's funeral, and the psychic link could not be maintained without Strange. The crime-fighter lowered his head, mercifully unaware that he was laughing softly to himself.

And then, as if some spectral hand had adjusted the tuner on a paranormal radio, he heard as loud and clear as drops of rain Joker's voice saying "_You can't escape me_."

Then all was silence.


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: So I found this fic kicking around on my laptop and thought since I never posted the last few chapters that I wrote, I might as well put them up here, even though it was ages and ages ago!  
_

* * *

Every morning, the newspapers arrived. Bundles of them, both local and national, tied coarsely with string. Delivered by unseen hand, involving no monetary transaction, their appearance was more reliable than time itself.

This dull morning, with its grey-bellied clouds lazily contemplating rainfall, Riddler had managed to intercept the delivery before his compulsory companion could get his grease paint-stained hands on them. During the past couple of days of his week long captivity in the dilapidated church, the Joker had been nothing more than a spectre – a rarely glimpsed but pervasively malevolent presence in Riddler's life. In some ways it was a relief to have the privacy of the building to himself, in other more numerous ways it was disconcerting not to know what activities the psychotic clown was engaged in.

In what might have once been the church's storeroom for choirboy ruffles and Bibles, was now an impromptu criminal hideout. Bowed under the weight of the newspapers in his arms, Riddler entered. Pushing yesterday's news off a stout coffee table to join the numerous papers and takeout cartons on the floor, he dumped his burden with a sigh of relief.

To save himself from a long and agonizing demise by boredom, and to hold together the last few threadbare strands of his already frayed nerves, Riddler had immersed himself deeper in an intellectual world of puzzles and riddles. The unprecedented amount of newspaper crossword puzzles that arrived every day could keep the soul-slaughtering mixture of fear and boredom at bay for at least a couple of hours every morning.

Retrieving the _Gotham Daily News_, which boasted the largest and most challenging crossword page of the lot, Riddler dubiously lowered himself down on one of the tattered couches that littered the cramped room. The cushion sagged beneath him in an unpleasantly moist kind of manner and he grimaced. Setting his jaw, he pinched at the razor-sharp crease in his green trousers. His custom-designed suit, complete with matching bowler hat, had been retrieved from its hiding place by one of Joker's goons the day after he had requested it. Now though, considering the filth in which he was forced to wallow, he regretted having asked for it. The poor suit would never be the same again.

Ignoring the news stories that could keep his murderous abductor chuckling, slavering and doodling in an ecstasy of death and destruction for hours on end, Riddler turned straight to the puzzle pages. To his horror, he found that the crossword has already been completed. Every single square had been filled in with the letters J, O, K, E and R over and over again, written in heavy red pen strokes.

With a howl of anguish, he flung the desecrated puzzle away from him. It struck a bullet-riddled television set that stood in a building devoid of electrical power, and fluttered down to join the other debris on the floor. It fell open at the offending page, the rage-red letters mocking him from across the room.

Riddler closed his eyes and carefully smoothed back his fine blonde hair with trembling hands, making an effort to reassert self-control. His breath rocketed a couple of times from his nose before slowing to a regular pace. He was calm and in control.

"So he wants to play games, does he?" Riddler murmured to himself in a controlled snarl. At his sides, his hands curled into tightly balled fists. "Then we'll see how he likes to be beaten." Standing, he retrieved his bowler hat and set it firmly on his head.

Of course, he had no intention of beating Joker either physically or intellectually. All Riddler was interested in was escape. He'd been trapped here in boredom and squalor for a week, and enough was enough. The ruined crossword was the last straw. He had a life to live; he wasn't about to allow himself to atrophy in the dark.

He made it no further than the door before his escape attempt was thwarted. Just as his spider-delicate fingers reached for the handle his action was anticipated by an unseen hand and the door was flung inwards of its own accord.

The figure in the doorway was certainly an apparition, but it was no miracle. At the sight of the woman who had opened the door, Riddler fell back a step, his eyes darting nervously around her outline. In a disjointed daze, he took in impressions of titillating tight black trousers, blonde hair pulled into low bunches either side of the head, shapely lips enhanced by dark lipstick, death white features surely unnatural, a black and red sweater form-fitting enough to drive all other thoughts from his head.

"My well of faith has gone dry, Doctor Quinzel," he murmured dizzily, "I believe I am seeing a mirage."

"Not a mirage," the hallucination brought about by isolation and ruined crossword puzzles giggled, "an oasis. Are you going to do any reflecting today, Edward?"

It was then that Riddler noticed the gun in Doctor Harleen Quinzel's hand. The sight shocked him back into ice-cold clarity of mind.

A new fear overcame him, worse than the thought that he was losing his mind to stress. Setting his face in a sneer, he drew himself up straight and met Doctor Quinzel's gaze. "Have you come to offer me asylum?" The only explanation he could come up with for the unexpected appearance of his psychiatrist was that the asylum had located him and sent her to bring him back to captivity. Whatever feelings he thought he might have for the woman, he valued his freedom more, and he was determined to do whatever it took to keep hold of it.

The psychiatrist grinned. "Something like that."

"Then I'm afraid we shall have to reschedule…" Letting his words trail off in the manner of a man who actually feels the precious sands of time slipping through his grasping fingers, Riddler delicately moved to sidestep around Doctor Quinzel. She thumbed the safety off her gun, but the loud click was silence compared to the sudden knocking of Riddler's heart against his ribcage.

"Going somewhere?"

At the nauseatingly familiar voice, Riddler looked up to see Joker approaching the storeroom. He had a distinct feeling that things were about to get messy, especially for dear old Doctor Quinzel. Surely Joker would resent the invasion of sanity upon his church of psychosis. Prudently, he retreated further into the storeroom and perched on the arm of the closest couch. He was all too aware that red and green is a gaudy combination at the best of times, and blood is a terribly stubborn stain.

"As a matter of fact…" With a sigh, he put his hat back down on the coffee table and lightly massaged his forehead with splayed fingertips, "You'll have to take that up with my psychiatrist."

With the arrival of the clown prince of crime, Doctor Quinzel gave a high-pitched squeal of what sounded incongruously like "Puddin'!"

Although he had committed many, many brilliant crimes and lived through more violence and horror than the average mind could even _begin_ to comprehend, Riddler covered his eyes with his hands. Unaware of holding his breath, he awaited the report of a gun, expecting at any moment to feel the last remnants of Doctor Quinzel's wasted life splashing warmly across the front of his irreplaceable suit jacket. Nothing happened.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes and then immediately wished that he hadn't.

Joker stood in the doorway with his arm slung casually around Doctor Quinzel's – the woman who not so long ago made love to Riddle on a psychiatrist's couch – waist. Like an adolescent schoolgirl on her first date, the woman who to all intents and purposes – and especially during that half-hour on the psychiatrist's couch – had seemed perfectly normal and well-adjusted, cuddled up to the maniac clown's side, looking up at him with adoring eyes. Riddler felt like he had just taken a particularly brutal kick to the stomach. Grasping the back of the couch for support, he raised his eyes accusingly to Harleen and wondered what the correct name was for the cold, dead weight that seemed to have settled on his chest.

"But Doctor Quinzel… Harleen… Why-? How-?" Disliking the whining, peevish quality his voice had temporarily taken on, Riddler quickly closed his mouth on any further words that might have been waiting to get out.

As if completely unaware of the beautiful, devoted woman at his side, Joker fixed his intense gaze solely upon the other man, his eyes dancing with amusement. "Allow me to introduce Harley Quinn, my… ah… _partner_ in crime." Smirking, he made as if to lick his free palm and then used it to smooth down his matted green curls. "We met at the funeral of Doctor Strange. She liked my style, I liked the position of influence she holds at Arkham Asylum."

"Oh, Mistah J, you're so sweet!" the woman who was no longer Doctor Harleen Quinzel cooed.

In a cartoon parody of love, she clasped her hands before her and went up on tiptoe, her face craned upwards with the puckered-lip intent of placing a kiss on the clown's scarred cheek. Long, dark eyelashes brushed her powder white skin as she closed her eyes.

Abruptly, Riddler stood up. He fought to keep his expression neutral in defiance of what he felt inside, but in his hands he convulsively twisted one of the yellow HB pencils he always kept about his person, and with which he had intended to complete the crossword on a morning a hundred realities removed from this one. He was so flustered, that in moving towards the happy couple who stood blocking his way out, he neglected to retrieve his hat.

"This is all very sweet," he said, carefully keeping his face averted, "but I'm afraid I'm diabetic, so for the sake of my health I must leave."

He was interrupted by a strangled sounding "urk!" of surprise. Reluctantly, he looked up to find that with a violence as casual as his affections, Joker had caught Harley Quinn around the throat to halt the progress of her kiss. From the pinched look of her skin around his fingers, it was far from a light or playful grip.

The clown fixed Riddler with a gaze that was almost regretful, pitying, pinning the green-clad man in place as effectively as a butterfly on a pin. "You can't escape me," he softly told his captive, the sincerity that only the insane can ever truly know in his voice.

"I escaped Arkham, I can escape you just as easily," Riddler promised with cold arrogance.

Whilst the man had been talking, Harley had carefully pried her lover's fingers from around her throat. Standing no more than a pace back from him, she seemed no more deeply affected by the aggression than the red fingerprints on her neck, which were already beginning to fade. Still she looked at the murderer with undisguised devotion. _She's insane_, Riddler realised with a sudden lurch of fear and shame, _completely fruit and nut cake. I've traded one madhouse for another._ He had to get out.

"Ah… I'm afraid _not_," Joker was saying. "You see, you couldn't do what I wanted all locked up in Arkham, so I had Harley here provide you with the perfect opportunity to escape. And the way she won your trust… and the way you threw yourself whole-heartedly into playing the part I chose for you, couldn't have gone any better if I'd _planned_ it." Giggling quietly, mockingly, he passed his tongue across his lips, making sure to pronounce his next few words with elaborate care. "I _own_ your freedom, Riddles."

Riddler's ego frantically began building defensive, labyrinthine walls against the infiltration of this unwanted information, but he could feel them starting to crumble under the pressure. The pencil in his hands almost snapped in half. Desperately, he looked to Harley for reassurance.

"Doctor Quinzel, is that true?"

"Sure thing!" the insane psychiatrist chirped with callous cheerfulness.

The walls fell down. Snarling and spitting in a rage he had never exhibited, even when amongst the uninhibited inmates of Arkham, Riddler launched himself at his grinning captor. He clutched the pencil in one white-knuckled hand, lead point outwards like a primitive's weapon. His mind was blank with the need to lash out, hurt, destroy. The pencil's tip lanced through the air towards Joker's eyes and the clown began to laugh, highly amused by the attack.

Although he should have expected the laughter and been prepared for it, the sound unnerved Riddler, undermined his fury. He faltered uncertainly. Joker seized the opportunity by knocking the other man's wrist into the doorframe with a backhanded swipe. The pencil clattered to the floor, leaving Riddler weaponless. As weak in body as he was strong in intellect, Riddler yielded helplessly to the counter-attack.

Not content with merely disarming his opponent, Joker grabbed hold of the man's arm and, still laughing, pulled him uncomfortably close. Fetid, rotten-sweet breath washed hotly over Riddler's face in gales of mirth. Then, abruptly, it stopped, the violent smile lines carved into the clown's face the only reminded that he had ever shown amusement at all. His expression was deadly serious.

"Strike two, Riddler," he intoned.

In a skillful display of balance, he leant back on one leg and delivered a hefty kick to Riddler's stomach, at the same time letting go of his arm so that the scrawny man staggered back to land on the couch. Riddler lay there on the filthy fabric, winded, gasping like the evolutionary fish emerging from water for the first time. Over the deafening roar of oxygen deprivation that seemed to fill his entire body apart from the white hot nexus of pain that was his stomach, he thought he heard Joker saying "Sit down, we have to talk," and very distantly, he thought he could hear a woman laughing and clapping. Through blurred vision, softly greying around the edges, he could see Joker standing over him, reaching into the purple folds of his coat. Convinced that he was about to be murdered, Riddler painfully gasped out "No!"

A newspaper was slapped down on his breathless form.

He was still alive. He wasn't going to die here in this church of filth. His breath coming stronger and more regularly, he painfully pulled himself into a sitting position. The clown stood expectantly over him, so he commanded his trembling fingers to shake out the newspaper. Blankly, he stared at the headline story for a while.

"So a gangster was shot outside City Hall," he said at last, annoyance soothing the ache in his chest and stomach, "that's hardly news, is it?"

"I think rumours of your intelligence have been greatly exaggerated, Riddles." Sloughing off his heavy overcoat and flinging it absently over the back of the couch, Joker took a seat beside his abductee. Leaning over, pleasantly as two gentlemen discussing politics over a strong cup of Sunday morning coffee, he tapped at one of the article's photographs with a cracked-nail finger. "Says here that _Bats_ was part of the police squadron assigned to City Hall during the protest that day. He – he still thinks that he's one of _them_." His voice edged towards high-pitched hysteria once again. "After all they've _done_ to him. Talk about masochist."

"Yes, I'd heard that the vigilante had become part of the law. Obviously he never read the job description."

Agitated, impatient, Joker shook his head, using his hands to better illustrate his words. "No, you don't understand. Now that the Batman is, heh, official, there'll be _inquiries_, _investigations_, surveillance. He's ours for the taking, Riddler."

The Riddler said nothing. Already, the indignities of the past week were forgotten, his mind entirely occupied with elaborate games of wit against Batman, imagined triumphs as he won the trophy of the masked man's identity. His eyes shining greedily, he glanced at the man beside him.

"When do I start?"

With an unpleasant laugh, Joker gestured vaguely to Harley, saying "I think we're in need of a little celebration." To Riddler, he said "First thing in the morning."

As if by magic, Harley appeared at the arm of the couch. She held a small glass tumbler, half-filled with the comforting warmth of liquor in her hand. Sitting back, Joker lifted it from her. His eyes fixed challengingly on the other man, he passed it to him with such a deliberately violent jerk that the liquid leapt from its glass confines straight down onto Riddler's lap. The man jumped and gave a wordless cry of anger, staring down at his ruined suit trousers.


	9. Chapter 9

Alfred was in Bruce's penthouse bedroom, stripping off the unused bedclothes for their weekly wash and thinking about better days, when the door behind him was flung open.

"Alfred, where's the keys to the Lamborghini?"

He turned to find not Batman with his shadowed, darkened eyes in the doorway, but his trusted employer Bruce Wayne. It had been so long since he had seen Bruce out of his bat-armour that now, in civilian clothing, the man looked frail and vulnerable. Nevertheless, a smile ghosted across Alfred's face. It was good to see Bruce again, perhaps he was shaking off the strange disassociation that had gripped him and was now returning to himself.

But then Alfred noticed the livid scar on his employer's cheek and his hope fell back in defeat. Bruce was always so careful to keep the wound covered when in out of uniform, knowing as he did that it would irrefutably connect him to Batman.

"Where you left them I expect, Master Bruce," Alfred replied, turning back to the sheets. "Lucius Fox called by the way, sir. Wanted to know if you still wanted the company to be called '_Wayne_' Enterprise."

"Not now, Alfred," was the impatient return. "I've got more important matters to attend to."

"Such as the fact that you haven't reported in to Gotham PD for two days now?"

Gathering up the bundle of sheets and pillow cases in his arms, Alfred turned, making to sidestep around his employer to the door. His way was promptly blocked and a sheaf of newly printed papers thrust into his hands, forcing him to reluctantly return his workload to the bed. With wary eye, he perused the top few sheets. "It appears to be in some kind of code, sir."

"Exactly. I knew they would want to hide it from me, but I finally managed to solve the encryption. In your hands, you're holding all medical records taken by Doctor Strange during his work at Arkham. And look here…" Taking the papers back from the unresisting hands of his trusted friend and butler, Bruce confidently shuffled through them, as if by solving the encryption he had become able to read the coded pages at a glance as he would with papers written in English, until he came across the page he was looking for. To Alfred, it just looked like more of the same nonsensical gibberish.

"A few years ago, Strange provided evidence in court for Mukharbek's mental incompetence. The testimony saved him from lifetime imprisonment and guaranteed him a short-term stay in Arkham. Mukharbek happens to be the brother of the Chechen – a prominent member of the Falcone crime family."

"All very interesting, Master Bruce, I'm sure; but isn't this better suited to your memoirs?"

Leaving the papers in Alfred's hands once again, Bruce turned away with the distracted air of one who isn't listening to a word his companion is saying. As the long-suffering butler looked on, his employer attacked the only-just-tidied bedroom with the most vigour and enthusiasm he had displayed for a long time, muttering "keys, keys, keys," under his breath. He turned out painstakingly arranged drawers, rumpled freshly pressed suits by turning the pockets inside out. Amidst the mess, the man who had single-handedly thwarted the elaborate and terrible plans of a genius madman, still couldn't find his car keys.

Alfred thought of England, his home, and of walking along quiet stone beaches with nothing but the sea for company.

"You don't understand," seizing an expensive suit jacket from its hanger, Bruce shook it violently upside down and then dropped it in disgust when no keys fell from the pockets. "This could be the break I've been looking for. Connect Strange to the mob and he's finished. I've got to go and speak to him at the hospital, try and find out what he knows, see if he'll confess to anything."

The sea boiled into an empty nothingness as the bottom dropped out of Alfred's world. Hurt, confused, numb, he watched Bruce's shoe crease the fabric of the discarded jacket even further as he stepped on it, already searching for the next likely hiding place. Quietly, Alfred said "Doctor Strange is no longer at the hospital."

His friend stopped in his tracks and stared at him, the first strains of anger beginning to show around his mouth. "What do you mean? Has he been transferred and you didn't tell me?" His voice rose to a near-shout and he slapped the back of one hand against the open palm of the other, making an ugly slapping sound. "When you _know_ how important this case is to me?"

So, there was an end to the falling after all, a smooth rock bottom. Alfred felt his composure return to him. As he had done the first time Bruce had become angry, he showed no reaction to the aggression, except perhaps to clench his jaw more firmly. Lifting his head, he met Bruce's feverish glare with cool, calm eyes.

"Doctor Strange is no longer at the hospital because he died four months ago. You attended the funeral yourself, Master Bruce."

Never dropping eye contact, he saw the lost fear of Martha and Thomas Wayne's orphaned son flicker in his employer's eyes. Then it was gone. There was no Bruce at all, there was only the Batman.

"The I won't be needing the Lamborghini keys. I'm going to take the other car and pay a visit to the Chechen."

Bruce turned towards the door and this time it was he who found his way blocked. His eyes glittered coldly down at his old friend, impersonal as the stars in the night sky. But Alfred believed that there was humanity behind that glassy shine still, that Bruce would never lose his basic human kindness, the compassion that led him to stalk the streets as a thankless vigilante night after lonely night.

Letting the years fall away, Alfred placed his hands on the younger man's shoulders, as he had done when the man was a boy, suddenly alone in a big scary world that was not meant for his young mind. "I beg you to reconsider, Bruce; for both your sake and mine. You're not well."

The man, the Batman, impatiently shook his friend off. "I'll be back by morning."

Alfred waited until his employer had nearly reached the door, trying to gather his courage. His face, lined with years of knowledge, was troubled. For a moment, he thought he would say nothing, that Bruce would be gone and the chance would be lost, but then he heard a voice that could only be his saying "Then I shall have to tender my resignation. I can no longer perform my duties if it means staying here and watching you slowly destroy yourself."

Bruce – Batman – paused for a moment, his back to the room and to his friend. But he said nothing at all, merely paused and then walked away.

* * *

The Iceberg Lounge nightclub was very dark and very loud, the perfect place for people to hold conversations they didn't want overheard about things they wanted no one to see.

The Chechen was currently involved in one such conversation. At least, he was until he was disturbed by the commotion that seemed to spread outward from the entrance, like a ripple on a lake that has been polluted drop by drop with toxic substances. People hurried past the small white table he shared with his business associates, their faces twisted in grotesque masks of horror by the nightclub's strobe, multicoloured lights, robbing all who passed of their identities.

Standing, the Chechen caught one such faceless runner from the crush of people around him. He looked down into the make-up streaked face of a young woman, her hair shorn and dyed in the style of one of Gotham's many street gangs. She struggled against his grip, numerous facial piercings catching the erratic light as she scowled up at him.

"What is going on?" The Chechen demanded to know, giving the woman a shake to remind her of who was in charge. He feared suddenly that the panic might have been precipitated by Doctor Strange who, discontent with one mere street shooting, had decided to bring his sworn vengeance to a more dramatic setting.

"Let go of me! The Batman is coming. It's a raid, man."

Relieved, but only marginally so, the Chechen let go of the woman and she promptly disappeared into the throng. The Batman. These days a sighting of the masked manhunter meant that the police were not far behind. It was not so intimidating now, but no less troublesome. With the police scum crawling all over the place, it was unlikely that the Iceberg Lounge would be opening its doors come tomorrow night and that was unacceptable. A lot of livelihoods depended on the Lounge, not least his, as mob money and business was tied into the place. They had all suffered enough loss after the place was closed down following the death of the original owner, Oswald Cobblepot. A more permanent closure by the police could possibly prove fatal.

His men had heard the unwelcome news and now turned expectant eyes to him, awaiting instruction. He nodded and executed a hand signal. The comment was silent but explicit – 'find the police, neutralize them, leave the bat-freak to me.' As one they rose and moved confidently through the heat and darkness towards a rear exit.

Then the Chechen saw him, the Batman, striding through the press of oblivious dancers, as grim and dark as the grave, the thumping music lending him an aspect of the surreal so that he seemed to float like an avenging angel towards his target. Light flashed across his cowl-covered face, illuminating the scar on his cheeks as if a knife had wounded him afresh, the cut appearing with the shock of stigmata.

Again, the Chechen heard daemonic laughter in his head and felt the phantom teeth of dogs tear ragged flesh from bone. Legs shaking, he sat back down and waited for the end to come.

The end came, but it took nothing from him. Instead, it grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and hoisted him up until his expensive Italian-made shoes hung in thin air. He looked into the unknowable face of the Batman. Half-formed words, forgotten memories, floated to the forefront of his mind – _gaze not into the abyss lest the abyss gaze back into you_. Over the crime-fighter's shoulder, he could see people dancing. It was just another normal night at the Iceberg Lounge.

"Where are you hiding him?" the Bat snarled.

"I know my rights. I speak to no one until I see my lawyer."

"I'm not here with the police." With no more effort than if he were throwing away a ragdoll, Batman flung the Chechen onto the table he had a few minutes previously been sitting at, discussing business. Glasses shattered on the floor. The mobster's spine cracked against the sturdy plastic tabletop and he cried out in pain, but still no one gave the scene a moment's notice.

Groaning, the Chechen rolled painfully onto his side, waiting to gather enough strength to stand. He wished that he had not sent all of his men outside. He should have known that there would be trouble. perhaps he was becoming slow, making stupid mistakes.

Half-on, half-off the table, one jewelry encrusted hand clutching at the edge, the mobster spat "Then perhaps I should tell them they need to keep their bat on a tighter leash, eh? You have no right to prey on hard-working men like me. You destroy the business of men who seek only to feed and shelter their families without a second thought for the people you hurt. Why don't you leave us alone?"

"Save the self-pity for your parole officer." Stepping lithely around the table, blocking any hope of the Chechen making a swift exit, he asked "Where is he?"

"I don't know who you're talking about," the mobster replied sulkily as he got to his feet and leant back against the table for support.

The Dark Knight paused silently for a moment, folding his arms over his chest. It gave the Chechen an uncomfortable but distinct impression that the other man was trying to decide whether to beat him or answer him. But considering the answer he received, the Chechen's immediate thought was that a beating would have been more welcome.

"Doctor Hugo Strange. I know your connection to him."

The Chechen stiffened, a muscle twitching in his ruined jaw. How could the Bat have known of his business, his _trouble_ with Strange? There must have been a leak. He would have bet all of his money that the informant was that no-good, two-faced Detective Bullock. That crooked cop would spill every secret he knew for the offer of a free doughnut.

"I don't know what you are talking about."

It was then that he thought he saw something that would never be seen in the Batman's eyes – desperation. This sight set the wheels in his brain spinning and as the perfect proposition was pieced together, a slow smile twisted the ravaged remains of his face. Here was a way to kill two rivals with one bullet, as the saying went.

Adopting an air of confidentiality, dipping his head in an obsequious manner, the Chechen leant in closer to the other man and beneath the thump of the music sad "You want Strange, I will give you Strange. But first you must help me."

"Why should I help scum like you?" Was the Batman's harsh reply, but he was caught like a worm on a hook, unable to turn away.

"Because you, you are Gotham's 'Dark Knight' and you hate to have a death on your watch."

Batman made no reply. With the anticipated taste of victory sweet in his mouth, the Chechen continued. "Me and my men, we are in danger from a powerful man who seeks to systematically murder us all so that he can establish his own monopoly on business here in Gotham. Give the Falcone family your protection and I will give you everything I know about Strange."

Batman glared down at the Chechen's proffered hand. He did not shake it. "I don't make deals with criminals."

But the Chechen knew that he had made an offer that the masked manhunter couldn't possibly refuse. "This could be the start of a beautiful friendship."


End file.
